Best Dungeon Crawler Board Games of 2024 – Review & Comparison

It is only human to desire exploration. That is part of the reason dungeon crawler board games are becoming increasingly popular nowadays.

Not only are you able to wander through vast and dangerous wastelands, but you can also loot for riches and solve intriguing mysteries as you go further into your adventure.

Licensed dungeon crawlers with established universes, like Batman or Star Wars, take the experience up a notch: you can even play as familiar heroes that you have grown up watching!

With so many games available to choose from, how do you know which one is the best for you? It is time to end your hunt for the best dungeon crawler board games! Join us on a journey of delving into some of the most popular, engaging, and thematic dungeon, catacomb, underground, maze, and even surface crawlers today to find your perfect match!

Top 10 Dungeon Crawler Board Games – Quick Comparison

1. Best Dungeon Crawler Overall – Gloomhaven

Playing as these characters make you feel like you are living in Gloomhaven as them, which gives off a unique and immersive feel to the game.

In Gloomhaven, you fight with a finite amount of cards in your character’s deck. You play two cards every turn, which will then be discarded or even removed permanently from the game. To preserve your deck, you have to make smart, tactical decisions.

Gloomhaven is a legacy dungeon crawler game. Any changes made in the game are permanent, so your hero will only get stronger and stronger until they retire.

Retirement is a bittersweet affair, but we loved how realistic it feels. After all, even the most revered hero has to retire at one point. Sometimes, the game even surprises you with the return of these retired heroes to push the story forward.

2. Best All Time Classic – Descent: Journeys in the Dark

In Descent, you start with a meager 15 cards and earn the rest along the way. Don’t let the limited equipment and items stop you! Nothing feels redundant in this compact game. You will inevitably use all the cards in this game at one point or another. You just need to get a little creative.

You get fewer cards as the overlord, but the cards you do get are more than enough to bulldoze the heroes to oblivion. Because of this, we constantly struggled and we can’t move forward to our goals. The dice-rolling mechanism can also be frustrating since you might not be able to fulfill the true potential of your character build if you are unlucky.

3. Best For Casual Play – Arcadia Quest Inferno

The game also introduces Angels, which are allied characters you can rescue, escort, or assist. Dealing with Angels can affect the storyline and eventually let you recruit them and join your side in the fight with the evil.

Arcadia Quest is heavy on dice-rolling as you use custom die to attack and defend. However, because some monsters and heroes can counter your attack the same way, you need to be strategic to secure a win. It’s simple, yet challenging.

It can feel random sometimes because of how much the game relies on the dice and luck. Sometimes, all you need is an unlucky dice roll to put you in a bad spot. You might also get unlikely victories from lucky crits.

In addition, some scenarios are tougher than others, with fewer upgrades and more overpowered monsters. That being said, like most classic dungeon crawlers, the game is predominantly based on fun and story. Which you might find frustrating if you are a strategist at heart.

You will enjoy Arcadia Quest if you like screwing around with your real-life rivals. The game offers a unique blend of compulsory cooperative and competitive (i.e. PvP) quests as a winning condition. So in addition to slaying Lord Fang’s henchmen, you would also have to keep a close eye on your competition.

4. Best Cinematic Dungeon Crawl – Batman: Gotham City Chronicles

The amount of detail and love poured into Batman: Gotham City Chronicles is next to phenomenal. The turn limit gave us a sense of urgency and importance, which contributes to the overall feel of the game.

You have to weigh the pros and cons of beating up a thug versus infiltrating the secret hideout. Otherwise, you might end up accidentally helping Bane blow Gotham up. Besides that, the terrain and elevation details on the board improve the gaming experience. You will feel like Batman himself, jumping from rooftop to rooftop or skulking in the shadows.

We were surprised by how confusing the rule books are for such a huge game. It was difficult to navigate with lots of information to sift through. It was a pain trying to look up tiny details like terrain and special cases while playing. So, be prepared to spend some time getting things straight.

5. Best 2 Player Dungeon Crawler – Claustrophobia 1643

The game depends heavily on dice for combat and special circumstances, so don’t be surprised when your game thrown off by a stroke (or streak) of bad luck. Luckily, you can mitigate some of this with strategy. The battle is long and hard, but it feels super satisfying when you win.

The balance of the game is tilted towards the Infernal player in Claustrophobia 1643. Although you are weaker than Western Warriors, there are infinite ways to stomp out your opponent’s fire of hope with your heavy leather boots.

For starters, you have a home advantage playing as Infernal. Besides this, you can spawn more demons and troglodytes than the Western Warriors can kill or separate the Western Warriors by manipulating map tiles in the dungeon. It is a role that requires less grit and strategy but extremely overpowered.

6. Best Cooperative – Shadows of Brimstone: City of the Ancients

The dungeon is the interesting part. You draw a map tile and an encounter token every time you enter a room in the mine. The encounter tile tells you how many monsters you meet and their order of appearance. Every monster you defeat gives you experience, which is essential for your leveling up since it will only get harder from this point forth.

After you defeat all the monsters in the room, you can scavenge for treasures. Once scavenged, you claim the room so other explorers can’t lay their money-grubbing hands on it.

In between adventures, you can go to frontier towns to spend your wealth or simply to get a quick drink. However, towns are, by no means, safe havens. Your dark adversaries from the mines might follow and wreak havoc while you ransack a house for gold!

7. Best For Kids – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shadows of the Past

Unlike Raph – Leo, Mikey, and Donnie start with 3 dice each, giving you only 3 actions per round. But the spirit of brotherhood gives you 2 extra dice from each end of your arrangement, which potentially can bump your total up to 5 actions per round. To maximize your moves, you have to play efficiently as a team.

We loved the thematic touches in the game. Before you start any scenario, you can read the Adventure Comic to learn the background of the mission and the aftermath.

We especially loved Raph’s gameplay since it shows how much personality is in the game. As Raph, you start with 5 dice, so you don’t have to rely on other turtles as much. But we loved how well the game incorporates Raph’s I-don’t-need-you personality into the gameplay. Every turtle starts with a personal item and gains special abilities along the way. And get this, the game uses pizza tokens as health. How Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is that?

8. Best Deck Building Dungeon Crawler – Thunderstone Quest

You get different rooms in dungeons depending on the quest you got. Monsters in the dungeon are challenging to beat without proper resources, so be sure to stock up on torches and potions. You can’t sit around and hope for the best in Thunderstone Quest, so put on your strategist hat and soldier on!

Furthermore, we liked that you discard the monster cards in a different pile. This keeps your deck lean so you don’t have to worry about drawing monsters in your hand anymore. Having the wilderness that you can visit at any time is also great. Now, you can train in the wilderness even if you start with a lame hero and crappy gear.

That being said, it can get a bit stale when you are preparing to go into the dungeon. Pacing can be slow if you keep drawing unusable cards. Wounds decrease the number of cards you can draw as well so you would have to play smart to avoid the game getting drawn out.

9. Best Thematic – Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower

In essence, Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower is jam-packed with intricate storylines, miniatures, and fun minigames. For such a content-heavy game, the gameplay is surprisingly simple. You roll a certain amount of dice provided by your character to perform actions. You can also use a shared dice pool for more complicated strategies.

The minigames are one of the highlights of Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower. Instead of a simple upgrade or skill check, you play a minigame when you run into certain game components. For example, upon finding a trapped chest, you put two dice on top of a face-down treasure card and attempt to slide them off. This is a refreshing change from the run-of-the-mill dungeon crawler mechanics in many games.

Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower brings classic characters from the lore to the tabletops in pieces. You see your miniatures come to life by assembling them. We loved how personal this process feels. By the end of sticking together multiple parts of a dwarf’s beard together, you will feel a connection with the game unlike any other.

10. Best MIniatures – Darklight: Memento Mori

The game features a modular board game, which means all the grotesque monsters and deadly traps you face is randomly generated.

Every room leaves you wondering if you will leave unscathed this time. It is an entirely dice-based dungeon board game, so make sure you have Lady Luck by your side when you go into the dungeons.

The game can be exceptionally punishing and brutal. As an Accursed, you start the game wearing scraps and work your way up. You get 20 extra skill cards every level you gain. With the right calls and purchases, you can train your Accursed to become a celebrated hero once again.

The miniature designs in Darklight: Memento Mori is detailed and downright horrifying, in a good way. It is inspired by grimy, old school monster designs from the 80s and 90s, so expect to see disturbing designs filled with tentacles, or another torso growing from the pelvic area of a man. To add to the overall feel, this game has some of the most gorgeous miniatures we have ever seen in a dungeon crawler board game.

Final Words

You don’t want to invest in the wrong games, only to never touch it again. Board games are subjected to personal tastes, especially dungeon crawlers. To find your best fit, you have to ask yourself: what are you looking for?

Love watching your opponent(s) sob in defeat? Try playing Claustrophobia 1643 and Gloomhaven. Hate the dice-randomness that sometimes comes with dungeon crawler board games? Try Thunderstone Quest! Do you want to be legendary comic book heroes and bust crimes? Batman: Gotham City Chronicles and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shadows of the Past might be more up your speed.

Besides that, your experience with dungeon crawler board games matters too. Descent, Darklight: Memento Mori, and Shadows of Brimstones: City of Ancients can curb your appetite for something hardcore. Some games like Arcadia Quest, TMNT: Shadows of the Past, Claustrophobia 1643, and Warhammer Quest scales well with mixed groups.

Most dungeon crawler board games are designed around 4 players which seems to be a sweet spot for player collaboration and group decision making. In fact, we have just finished reviewing the best board games for 4 players if you are interested to have a peak.

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